You’ve Got Mail

The people who will choose you may never shake your hand first. That’s not a problem. It’s your advantage—if your story is clear enough to travel.

One thing that I love is old movies. I love new movies too, especially new movies based on old movies. I’m going to share a story about one of my favorites, because there’s a lesson for all of us in it.

In 1993, Nora Ephron made a movie about two people who fall for each other without ever being in the same room.

Five years later, she made it again.

You’ve Got Mail is a remake of The Shop Around the Corner—a 1940 film with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, itself adapted from a Hungarian play. Sleepless in Seattle borrowed its soul from An Affair to Remember, which has been remade four separate times. And The Shop Around the Corner? It became a beloved Broadway musical called She Loves Me.

(For the film nerds: The Shop Around the Corner is the better film. You’re welcome.)

The same human truth. Told across decades, mediums, and generations—because it was clear enough to travel.

A great story outlasts everything. Including proximity. You don’t need to be in the room to make a great impression.

What proximity used to do for you—quietly

Before hybrid work, before Zoom, before the world went largely digital and way too remote, proximity did a lot of the quiet work for you.

Hallway conversations. Lunch. The 30-second catch-up before a meeting started. The conference you attended every year, where the same people found each other, and the relationship deepened without anyone planning it. Repetition built recognition. Familiarity built trust. People learned what you stood for and why you were worth choosing—by osmosis. You didn’t have to engineer it. You just had to show up.

That safety net is largely gone. The game changed. Most of us know it. We feel it every time we realize someone who should know us doesn’t. The casual visibility that used to accumulate naturally has been compressed into scheduled calls and digital threads. Squeezed into artificial interactions, where a naturally human one once existed.

That’s not fair. But here’s what it means practically: the know, like, and trust that used to build slowly through presence now has to be built deliberately through clarity. Through your story and value being strong and present to do some of this work for you.

If your value isn’t clear enough to travel without you in the room, it doesn’t get reinforced.

It fades.

A great bed and breakfast on the Death Star

A few years ago, I worked with a startup studio inside a major corporation. Their purpose was genuinely remarkable: a curated, handpicked team of experts across every business function, ready and willing to help entrepreneurs take a great idea and turn it into an actual product.

But they had a problem that was almost poetic in its irony.

Because they came from a big company, they carried the full terrifying visage of corporate America—even though they were a scrappy, founder-minded team with genuinely good intentions. Entrepreneurs, by nature and hard-won instinct, are afraid of exactly that. They’ve seen what “help” from a large company looks like. The partnership sounds great until the corporation owns the idea, the timeline, and the exit.

It was, in short, a great bed and breakfast, unfortunately on the Death Star.

In the old world, they might have fixed this slowly—show up at enough conferences, shake enough hands, let proximity do its quiet work. COVID ended that option entirely.

So we stopped trying to overcome the perception problem through presence and started solving it through clarity and story.

We spent real time understanding what entrepreneurs actually feared and actually wanted from a corporate partner—in their own words. Then we rebuilt the brand around that truth. Sharper message. Specific proof. A clear, repeatable story that addressed the fear directly and made the value undeniable.

The results were remarkable. Not because they got back to the conferences. Because they stopped needing to.

The part most people get backwards

Most people treat the digital world as a consolation prize for losing proximity. It isn’t.

For the people who understand this, it’s a more powerful tool than the conference circuit ever was. Because you control it.

People will Google you before they meet you. They’ll look at your LinkedIn even if they already know you. A decision-maker in a meeting when your name comes up will have your profile open in a separate tab before the conversation ends. What they find in those 90 seconds—or don’t find—shapes whether they’re interested before you ever get to make your case.

A well-crafted LinkedIn profile with a clear story and specific proof does the early work of a hundred hallway conversations. A few well-placed articles establish credibility before the first call. Consistent, clear, valuable content builds familiarity with people you’ve never met—people who arrive already knowing, already leaning toward liking, already beginning to trust.

Clear narratives scale. Vague ones stall.

An Affair to Remember. The Shop Around the Corner. Sleepless in Seattle. You’ve Got Mail. She Loves Me.

Five titles. The same human truth. Told again and again—because it was clear enough to travel.

Your value deserves the same.